June 2017

On the 10th of June a gang of our committed volunteers gave up their Saturday to take on the glorious Scottish summer and help clean up Ben Nevis. The weather was uninviting to say the least but thanks to our hardy group we had a very successful day.

As you all know, Ben Nevis being the highest mountain the UK, can offer various degrees of challenge. One of them is getting to where we want to be so we can do the necessary work. A usual trip to Ben Nevis takes about 7 hours so as you can imagine most of our day was taken up by reaching where we wanted to be.

Having reached our spot we aimed to “de-roughen” the path. The path itself is in good nick but typically over a period of time large stones and scree can migrate their way onto the path making it hard for walkers. So it was up to us to tidy this! And what a mighty fine job our volunteers did! almost like a new path!

Whilst this was happening, a small group continued onto the summit of Ben Nevis to carry out a litter pick. In particular we aimed to give the summit shelter a clean out. The summit shelter is rarely used as a refuge in the summer and is often used as a bin, so when possible it is important to arm yourself with bin bags and give it a clean out. To our surprise it was in relatively good shape. Although, the rest of the summit was a different story! Thankfully we had plenty of hands and bin bags. Filling our bags to capacity we carried as much as we could down the hill.

Having said this, it was great to acknowledge the fact that when compared to previous litter picks on Ben Nevis there was much less litter. Now, it is not obvious if this is walkers being more responsible but what is clear from experience and talking to others is the collective community that are working together to respect Ben Nevis. Many mountain guides operate on Ben Nevis and from first-hand experience we know they are a vital part of our team! Many guides practice a leave no trace policy and some even take more of the hill than they brought up! So from us at the 3PP and John Muir Trust, thank you to all that have helped keep the mountain litter free over the years.

Because of the weather we did not get the chance to take many photos but it was safe to say we had a very successful work party and the mountain is doing well!